Bandon Trails

Bandon Trails is the outlier. Where the other four 18-hole courses at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort draw their identity from the Pacific coastline, Bandon Trails turns inland. Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw routed the course through coastal forest, across open sand dunes, and through meadow clearings, creating a round that moves through more distinct environments than any other at the resort. It opened in 2005, the third course at Bandon Dunes, and it divides opinion in a way that the coastal courses do not.

The division is straightforward. Visitors who came to Bandon for ocean views will find Bandon Trails wanting. The course does not play along the cliffs. It does not offer the kind of Pacific panoramas that define Pacific Dunes or Sheep Ranch. For those visitors, Bandon Trails ranks last among the five, a perfectly reasonable assessment based on a legitimate preference.

The counterargument requires walking the course to understand. The opening holes play through tall coastal pines, with fairways carved from the forest floor and framed by tree canopy overhead. The light filters through the branches differently at different times of day, and the protection from the wind creates a playing environment that contrasts sharply with the exposed coastal courses. Around the 5th hole, the routing emerges from the forest into open dune terrain, and the character of the course shifts entirely. The wind arrives. The views expand. The turf firms. By the middle of the round, Bandon Trails has moved through three distinct landscapes, and each one has demanded a different approach to the golf.

At 6,788 yards with a par of 71 and a slope of 130, the course plays at a moderate difficulty level by Bandon standards. The Coore and Crenshaw design philosophy favors natural-looking green sites that sit into the terrain rather than rising above it. Several greens are partially hidden from the approach, requiring either local knowledge or a caddie's guidance to find the correct line. The putting surfaces are subtly contoured rather than dramatically shaped, and they reward the golfer who approaches with the right trajectory and landing angle.

The 12th through the 14th represent the course's strongest stretch, a sequence of holes that plays across open duneland with the ocean visible in the distance. The 12th, a long par 4, plays from an elevated tee across a valley to a fairway that rises toward a well-defended green. The 13th, a par 3, plays from a dune crest to a green set in a natural amphitheater. The 14th curves through the dune ridges with the kind of gentle dogleg that Coore and Crenshaw deploy better than nearly any other design team working today. These holes, played in sequence, make the case for Bandon Trails as convincingly as the opening holes of Pacific Dunes make the case for that course.

The forest holes are where Bandon Trails most clearly distinguishes itself. American links courses are, by convention, treeless. Bandon Trails challenges that convention by integrating forest golf into a links framework, using the trees not as penal hazards but as corridors that shape strategy and shot selection. The transition from forest to dune and back again creates a rhythm unique to this course. No other round at Bandon offers this kind of environmental variety.

For groups playing all five courses during a visit, Bandon Trails benefits from scheduling strategy. Playing it after two or three days of coastal golf provides a change of pace that refreshes the palate. The forest holes feel restful after the relentless wind exposure of the clifftop courses, and the dune sections deliver a satisfying return to open links golf. Played first in a visit, before the coastal courses have established their hold, Bandon Trails can feel like the warm-up act. Played in its proper sequence, it is something more interesting than that.